BAFTA Film Awards 2019

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Who deserves to win ‘Big Brother 20’? Let’s analyze the final three

Either JC, Kaycee or Tyler will walk away with the $500,000 prize on Wednesday’s “Big Brother 20” finale. But as we all know, who will win and who should win are two completely different things. Sometimes they align, sometimes they don’t, and they definitely don’t on “Big Brother” when a bitter jury is involved. All three finalists have a case to be made for winning, so who would be the most deserving of them all?

JC
On paper, JC looks like a classic floater who was dragged to the finale as an easy goat to sit alongside. His comp resume is by far the weakest of the three, with just one victory, but it was a very big one. He won the final four HOH to ensure a spot in the final three and save himself because he was definitely going to get cut had Level 6 won it. If he only had to win one comp, that was the one to win. He also got Angela, whom the rest of the jury hates, out on his HOH, so that’s going to be one of his major arguments.

But the crux of JC’s game was being a fantastic rat. Though he eventually worked more with Level 6, he played both sides and schemed, conspired, created paranoia by throwing in a hinky vote for Kaitlyn, and manipulated his “big dumb puppet” Faysal. His signature move has to be when he talked Fessy into targeting Scottie, his own alliance member, by making him jealous of Scottie’s relationship with Haleigh. Fessy may have done it himself, but JC helped drive the bus over Scottie and back it up. JC also played the middle early on so well that he avoided the block until the double eviction, where he was just nominated as a pawn.

JC’s biggest problem is that he thinks he’s the mastermind behind the season when he actually has no idea that he hasn’t been in control at all and that there is an alliance, Level 6, that just used him. If and when that comes to light on the finale, it could hurt JC. But JC’s type of game hardly makes it this far without some guaranteed safety from comp wins or a twist — which again he didn’t have until the final four — so he gets a lot of credit for making it this far.

Kaycee
Kaycee is a football player, so as any athlete would tell you, it’s not about how you start but how you finish. Kaycee was a non-entity for the first half of the game, except when she had to dress as a peanut, so much so that she was nicknamed “furniture” by fans because she blended in with the rest of the house. But she has been on fire the back half, claiming five Vetoes, an HOH and a Hacker comp, which is made all the better by the fact that Fessy previously said he didn’t want to waste a nomination targeting her because she doesn’t win anything. Since her victories all came in a flurry, she can argue that she was winning when she needed to as the numbers died down.

But more so than her comp wins, Kaycee has played the best social game. She made zero enemies in the house and was friendly with everyone. Getting closer with Haleigh during her last week was one of her best moves. Kaycee has also played the most loyal game, never wavering from Level 6 or her final two with Tyler, which could go a long way with the jury depending how much they care about who got blood on their hands. Kaycee has virtually no blood on hers and she gets credit for being the one vote to evict everyone’s mortal enemy, Angela.

Kaycee’s one drawback is her lack of an apparent strategy. We never heard, not even in her Diary Rooms, much long-term thinking or planning from her besides doing what’s best for Level 6. Since she’s a pro athlete in a team sport, it’s not surprising that she’s such a team player, and she benefited from being in the best alliance of the season, but would she have done as well had she been in The Hive? Still, a vote for her proves that you don’t have to play dirty to win.

Tyler
Tyler’s and Kaycee’s games and trajectories have been complete opposites. The lifeguard had been the season-long frontrunner, covertly controlling the house from the get-go, but he’s relaxed in recent weeks as his showmance with Angela heated up and Kaycee turned into the Veto queen. He’s still in a good position to win, but he’s not as strong as he was a month ago.

Tyler is on par with Kaycee in terms of comp wins — he has three HOHs and three Vetos, and could tie her at seven if he wins the final HOH — but he’s played the best strategic game by far. A lot of this best stuff was in the beginning of the season, when he got Kaitlyn to flip to evict Steve and then convinced her to backdoor Swaggy C, and he got close to Sam to ensure she’d vote with Level 6 a majority of the time. He was the brains behind most of Level 6’s insta-classic blindsides and was just the brains behind Level 6 in general. If we’re going to continue the sports metaphor, he was the coach drafting the plays and Level 6 executed them, with Kaycee being the MVP.

Tyler’s main issues are his multiple final two deals that might bite in him the butt and the fact that a lot of the jurors think he’s a follower, not a leader. He’s going to need to explain and defend his game in a way that proves how masterful he’s been — he was so good he never had to use his Power App! — and won’t embitter the jury more. He plans to honor his deal with Kaycee, so of his other ones, Sam and JC would be the most bitter, while Brett would likely respect Tyler blindsiding him. Tyler would need to do what Paul did not do the past two seasons, and that’s owning his game. Also helping him is that, unlike Paul, he was a nice, genial guy the whole time, so the jury could reward him for making big moves without being a dick.